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In his time-and-spaceship, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In
Space), Doctor Who (Tom Baker) and hiscompanions Sarah Jane (Elisabeth
Smith) and Harry (Ian Marter) land on a giant spaceship that stores
hundreds of cryogenically frozen humans ... it seems to be the Ark of
humanity, since earth was apparently destroyed by sunflares, so the last
survivors were sent up to wait for the earth to be inhabitable again,
which lasts a few thousand years.. But there are two other things our
heroes discover that are a bit disquieting: First off, someone has turned
off the alarmclock, so humanity has overslept by several thousand years,
and there are some unwanted passengers aboard, giant insects called the
Wirren, and they have chosen the ark to feed on the humans while
breeding..

But when Vira (Wendy Williams), the first one to wake up, finds
crewmembers missing, her first suspects are the Doctor and his companions,
and Noah (Kenton Moore), the captain of the ship, once woken up goes even
further and wants to eliminate our heroes ... but then Noah himself gets
bitten by a Wirren and slowly turns into one himself ... and soon they are
all over the ship, pretty much take it over while the Doctor and his
companions and a few survivors already woken up hide in the escape
missiles and make plans to fight the Wirren from there.

In the end though, our heroes manage to lure the Wirren into the escape
missile and launch it into space, and it seems that Noah, by now a
full-fledged insect by appearance, has preserved enough of his human side
to blow up the missile (him included) once far enough away from the Ark.
And once more humanity is saved ...

On a pure story level, The Ark in Space seems to be prefiguring Alien
by a few years, plus the very clinical design of the space station
interiors give theepisode an especially chilling atmosphere. Where the
episode does not succeed though are the dirt-cheap special effects, which
are often on Ed Wood-level: The miniatures look nothing short of
ridiculous, the insect outfits look anything but threatening, but worst of
all are the Wirren in larva state, which is nothing more than a man
wrapped in bubble-wrap, painted green. That the sets, despite their
clinical style, are rather cheaply made too - and obviously so - does not
help either.

Now I am not necessarily one to complain about cheap sets and effects,
nor am I one to think that good effects make a good movie or a big budget
is a saving grace (more often the opposite is true), only in this case a
little more money could have helped the good story tremendously.